Part 2 — CHAPTER V.

That evening, Mary felt more at leisure and at rest than for weeks past. There was nothing to be done for Mrs. Billiter but to watch beside her: and the carpenter had had his whispered orders in the street for the coffins for the two little boys. The mother had asked no questions, and had appeared to be wandering too much to take notice of anything passing before her eyes. Now she was quiet, and Mary felt the relief. She had refreshed herself (and she used to tell, in after years, what such refreshments were worth) with cold water, and a clean wrapper, and a mutton-chop, sent hot from the Plough and Harrow for the Good Lady (with some wine which she kept for the convalescents), and she was now sitting back in her chair beside the open window, through which fell a yellow glow of reflected sunshine from the opposite heights. All was profoundly still. When she had once satisfied her conscience that she ought not to be plying her needle because her eyes were strained for want of sleep, she gave herself up to the enjoyment—for she really was capable of enjoyment through everything—of watching the opposite precipice; how the shadow crept up it; and how the sunny crest seemed to grow brighter; and how the swallows darted past their holes, and skimmed down the hollow once more before night should come on. Struck, at last, by the silence, she turned her head, and was astonished at the change she saw. Her cousin lay quiet, looking as radiant as the sunset itself; her large black eyes shining, unoppressed by the rich light; her long dark hair on each side the wasted face, and waving down to the white hands which lay outside the quilt. Their eyes met, full and clear; and Mary knew that her cousin’s mind was now clear, like the gaze of her eyes.

“I see it all now,” said the dying woman, gently.

“What do you see, love?”

“I see the reason of everything that I did not understand before.” And she began to speak of her life and its events, and went on with a force and clearness, and natural eloquence—yet more, with a simple piety—which Mary was wont to speak of afterwards as the finest revelation of a noble soul that she had ever unexpectedly met with. Mrs. Billiter knew that her little boys were dead; she knew, by some means or other, all the horrors by which she was surrounded; and she knew that she was about to die. Yet the conversation was a thoroughly cheerful one. The faces of both were smiling; the voices of both were lively, though that of the dying woman was feeble. After summing up the experience of her life, and declaring what she expected to experience next, and leaving a message for her mother, she said there was but one thing more; she ‘should like to receive the sacrament.’ Mary wrote a note in pencil to Mr. Finch, and sent it by Sally, who had been hovering about ever since the morning, in the hope of being of further use, but who was glad now to get out of sight, that her tears might have way; for she felt that she was about to lose the only friend who had been kind to her (in a way she could accept) since Simpson had put her off from the promised marriage.

“She is sorry to part with me,” said that dying friend. “Cousin Mary, you do not think, as my mother does, that I have done wrong in noticing Sally, do you?”

“No; I think you did well. And I think your mother will be kind to her, for your sake, from this time forward. Sickness and death open our eyes to many things, you know, cousin.”

“Ay, they do. I see it all now.”

Sally was sorely ashamed to bring back 236Mr. Finch’s message. Well as she knew that time was precious, she lingered with it at the door.

Mr. Finch was sorry, but he was too busy. He hoped he should not be sent for again; for he could not come.

“Perhaps, Miss,” said Sally, with swimming eyes, “it might have been better to send somebody else than me. Perhaps, if you sent somebody else—”

“I do not think that, Sally. However, if you will remain here, I will go myself. It does not matter what he thinks of me, a stranger in the place; and perhaps none of his flock could so well tell him that this is a duty which he cannot refuse.”

Mary had not walked up the street for several weeks. Though her good influence was in almost every house, in the form of cleanliness, fresh air, cheerfulness, and hope, she had been seen only when passing from one sick room to another, among a cluster of houses near her aunt’s. She supposed it might be this disuse which made everything appear strange; but it was odd scarcely to feel her limbs when she walked, and to see the houses and people like so many visions. She had no feeling of illness, however, and she said to herself, that some time or other she should get a good long sleep; and then everything would look and feel as it used to do.

As she passed along the street, the children at play ran in to the houses to say that the Good Lady was coming; and the healthy and the convalescent came out on their door-steps, to bid God bless her; and the sick, who were sensible enough to know what was going on, bade God bless her from their beds.

What influence the Good Lady used with the clergyman there is no saying, as the conversation was never reported by either of them; but she soon came back bright and cheerful, saying that Mr. Finch would follow in an hour. She had stepped in at Warrender’s, to beg the father and daughter to come and communicate with the dying woman. They would come: and Sally would go, she was sure, and take Ann Warrender’s place at the wash-tub at home; for there were several sick people in want of fresh linen before night. Poor Sally went sobbing through the streets. She understood the Good Lady’s kindness in sending her away, and on a work of usefulness, because she, alas! could not receive the communion. She was living in sin; and when two or three were gathered together in the name of Christ, she must be cast out.

There was little comfort in the service, unless, as the bystanders hoped, the sick woman was too feeble and too much absorbed in her own thoughts to notice some things that dismayed them. Mrs. Billiter was, indeed, surprised at first at the clergyman’s refusal to enter the chamber. He would come no further than the door. Mary saw at a glance that he was in no condition to be reasoned with, and that she must give what aid she could to get the administration over as decently as possible. Happily, he made the service extremely short. The little that there was he read wrong: but Mrs. Billiter (and she alone) was not disturbed by this. Whether it was that the deadening of the ear had begun, or that Mr. Finch spoke indistinctly, and was chewing spices all the time, or that the observance itself was enough for the poor woman, it seemed all right with her. She lay with her eyes still shining, her wasted hands clasped, and a smile on her face, quite easy and content; and when Mr. Finch was gone, she told Mary again that she saw it all now, and was quite ready. She was dead within an hour.

As for Warrender, he was more disturbed than any one had seen him since the breaking out of the fever.

“Why, there it is before his eyes in the Prayer-book,” said he, “that clergymen ‘shall diligently from time to time (but especially in the time of pestilence, or other infectious sickness) exhort their parishioners to the often receiving of the holy communion:’ and instead of this, he even shuts up the church on Sundays.”

“He is not the first who has done that,” said Mary. “It was done in times of plague, as a matter of precaution.”

“But, Miss, should not a clergyman go all the more among the people, and not the less, for their having no comfort of worship?”

“Certainly: but you see how it is with Mr. Finch, and you and I cannot alter it. He has taken a panic; and I am sure he is the one most to be pitied for that. I can tell you too, between ourselves, that Mr. Finch judges himself, at times, as severely as we can judge him; and is more unhappy about being of so little use to his people than his worst enemy could wish him.”

“Then, Ma’am, why does not he pluck up a little spirit, and do his duty?”

“He has been made too soft,” he says, “by a fond mother, who is always sending him cordials and spices against the fever. We must make some allowance, and look another way. Let us be thankful that you and Ann are not afraid. If our poor neighbours have not all that we could wish, they have clean bedding and clothes, and lime-washed rooms, fresh and sweet compared with anything they have known before.”

“And,” thought Warrender, though he did not say it, but only touched his hat as he went after his business, “one as good as any clergyman to pray by their bedsides, and speak cheerfully to them of what is to come. When I go up the stair, I might know who is praying by the cheerfulness of the voice. I never saw such a spirit in any woman,—never. I have never once seen her cast down, ever so little. If there is a tear in her eye, for other people’s sake, there is a smile on her lips, because her heart tells her that everything that happens is all right.”

This night, Mary was to have slept. She 237herself had intended it, warned by the strange feelings which had come over her as she walked up the street: and it would gratify Aunty’s feelings that the corpse should not be left. She intended to lie down and sleep beside the still and unbreathing form of the cousin whose last hours had been so beautiful in her eyes. But Aunty’s feelings were now tried in another direction. Unable to move, Aunty was sorely distressed by Jem’s moanings and restlessness; and Mary was the only one who could keep him quiet in any degree. So, without interval, she went to her work of nursing again. Next, the funeral of Mrs. Billiter, and two or three more, fixed for the same day, were put off, because Mr. Finch was ill. And when Mr. Finch was ill, he sent to beg the Good Lady to come immediately and nurse him. After writing to his own family, to desire some of them to come and take charge of him, she did go to him: but not to remain day and night as she did with the poor who had none to help them. She saw that all was made comfortable about him, gave him his medicines at times, and always spoke cheerfully. But it was as she saw from the beginning. He was dying of fear, and of the intemperate methods of precaution which he had adopted, and of dissatisfaction with himself. His nervous depression from the outset was such as to predispose him to disease, and to allow him no chance under it. He was sinking when his mother and sister arrived, pale and tearful, to nurse him: and it did no good that they isolated the house, and locked the doors, and took things in by the window, after being fumigated by a sentinel outside. The doctor laughed as he asked them whether they would not be more glad to see him, if he came down the chimney, instead of their having to unlock the door for him. He wondered they had not a vinegar bath for him to go overhead in, before entering their presence. The ladies thought this shocking levity; and they did not conceal their opinion. The doctor then spoke gravely enough of the effects of fear on the human frame. With its effects on the conscience, and on the peace of the mind, he said he had nothing to do. That was the department of the physician of souls. (His hearers were unconscious of the mournful satire conveyed in these words.) His business was with the effect of fear on the nerves and brain, exhausting through them the resources of life. He declared that Mr. Finch would probably have been well at that moment, if he had gone about as freely as other persons among the sick, more interested in getting them well than afraid of being ill himself; and, for confirmation, he pointed to the Good Lady and the Warrenders, who had now for two months run all sorts of risks, and showed no sign of fever. They were fatigued, he said; too much so; as he was himself; and something must be done to relieve Miss Pickard especially; but—

“Who is she?” inquired the ladies. “Why is she so prominent here?”

“As for who she is,” replied he, “I only know that she is an angel.”

“Come down out of the clouds, I suppose.”

“Something very like it. She dropped into our hollow one August evening—nobody knows whence nor why. As for her taking the lead here, I imagine it is because there was nobody else to do it.”

“But has she saved many lives, do you think?”

“Yes, of some that are too young to be aware what they owe her; and of some yet unborn. She could not do much for those who were down in the fever before she came: except, indeed, that it is much to give them a sense of relief and comfort of body (though short of saving life) and peace of mind, and cheerfulness of heart. But the great consequences of her presence are to come. When I see the change that is taking place in the cottages here, and in the clothes of the people, and their care of their skins, and their notions about their food, I feel disposed to believe that this is the last plague that will ever be known in Bleaburn.”

“Plague! O horrid!” exclaimed the shuddering sister.

“Call it what you will,” the doctor replied. “The name matters little when the thing makes itself so clear. Yes, by the way, it may matter much with such a patient as we have within there. Pray, whatever you do, don’t use the word ‘plague’ within his hearing. You must cheer him up; only that you sadly want cheering yourselves. I think an hour a day of the Good Lady’s smile would be the best prescription for you all.”

“Do you think she would come? We should be so obliged to her if she would!”

“And she should have a change of dress lying ready in the passage-room,” declared the young lady. “I think she is about my size. Do ask her to come.”

“When I see that she is not more wanted elsewhere,” replied the doctor. “I need not explain, however, that that smile of hers is not an effect without a cause. If we could find out whether we have anything of the same cause in ourselves; we might have a cheerfulness of our own, without troubling her to come and give us some.”

The ladies thought this odd, and did not quite understand it, and agreed that they should not like to be merry and unfeeling in a time of affliction; so they cried a great deal when they were not in the sick room. They derived some general idea, however, from the doctor’s words, that cheerfulness was good for the patient; and they kept assuring him, in tones of forced vivacity, that there was no danger, and that the doctor said he would be well very soon. The patient groaned, remembering the daily funerals of the last 238few weeks; and the only consequence was that he distrusted the doctor. He sank more rapidly than any other fever patient in the place. In a newspaper paragraph, and on a monumental tablet, he was described as a martyr to his sacred office in a season of pestilence; and his family called on future generations to honour him accordingly.

“I am sorry for the poor young man,” observed the host at the Plough and Harrow; “he did very well while nothing went wrong; but he had no spirit for trying times.”

“Who has?” murmured farmer Neale. “Any man’s heart may die within him that looks into the churchyard now.”

“There’s a woman’s that does not,” observed the host; “I saw the Good Lady crossing the churchyard this very morning, with a basket of physic bottles on her arm—”

“Ah! she goes to help to make up the medicines every day now,” the hostess explained, “since the people began to suspect foul play in their physic.”

“Well; she came across the bit of grass that is left, and looked over the rows of graves—not smiling exactly, but as if there was not a sad thought from top to bottom of her mind—much as she might look if she was coming away from her own wedding.”

“What is that about ‘sweet hopes,’ in the newspaper?” asked Neale; “about some ‘sweet hopes’ that Mr. Finch had? Was he going to be married?”

“By that, I should think he was in love,” said the host: “and that may excuse some backwardness in coming forward, you know.”

“The Good Lady is to be married, when she gets home to America,” the hostess declared. “Yes, ’tis true. Widow Johnson told the doctor so.”

“What will her lover say to her risking her life, and spending her time in such a way, here?” said Neale.

“She tells her aunt that he will only wish he was here to help her. He is a clergyman. ‘O!’ says she, ‘he will only wish he was here to help us.’”

“I am sure I wish he was,” sighed Neale. “I wonder what sort of a man will be sent us next. I hope he will be something unlike poor Mr. Finch.”

“I think you will have your wish,” said the landlord. “No man of Mr. Finch’s sort would be likely to come among us at such a time.”